


The Sparrow

by wowbright



Series: Glee Season 4 episode reactions [13]
Category: Glee
Genre: Episode: s04e15 Girls (and Boys) on Film, Klaine week 2013, M/M, girls (and boys) on film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:32:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowbright/pseuds/wowbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> Last week was Klaine Week 2013, and I wrote a bunch of fics and posted them to Tumblr. This one was for Friday's theme: Anniversary. </em>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><em> <a href="http://luckyjak.tumblr.com">luckyjak</a> prompted: “ </em> <em> For "Anniversary" -- what they're doing this year, when they're broken up (do they call one another? Does Kurt go out with Adam? Does Blaine miss school? Do they try and pretend it's a normal day? Tell me tell me).” </em></p><p class="MsoNormal">~2,500 words of feels and hope. Dedicated to <a href="http://asecondgrace.tumblr.com">asecondgrace</a> and <a href="http://luckyjak.tumblr.com">luckyjak</a>. And Klaine. And feels.<br/>
<br/>
<a href="http://wowbright.tumblr.com/post/45473445548/fic-the-sparrow-pg"> tumblr </a> / <a href="http://wowbright.livejournal.com/26138.html">livejournal</a> / <a href="http://wowbright.dreamwidth.org/48240.html">dreamwidth</a> <em><br/>
</em></p><p class="MsoNormal">---<br/>
<br/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sparrow

On March 8, 2013, at 3:42 p.m., the same calendar reminder pops up on both of their phone displays: “THERE YOU ARE - ANNIVERSARY in one week.”

Kurt and Blaine have a lot of anniversaries. There’s the anniversary of the day they met, and the anniversary of their first official date, and the anniversary of the first time they spent the night together (which is not the same as the first time they had sex).

But this is the only one that Kurt didn’t delete from his calendar back in November. He’d stared at it, the memories sweeping over him – his sweet, vulnerable Blaine sitting before him, giddy and a little terrified, and Kurt had felt the same way, too, thought his stomach was going to leap out of his mouth when Blaine spoke those magic words _(“There you are, I’ve been looking for you forever”)_ and Kurt became absolutely speechless for the first time in years.

Kurt’s thumb had hovered over the red delete button for a long time. But in the end, he just couldn’t press it.

So here on a sunny winter afternoon in New York City, walking arm in arm with Adam in search of a romantic movie to help Kurt forget _Moulin Rouge_ , Kurt’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he immediately knows why without having to look.

He should delete it now – or maybe not _right_ now, but as soon as Adam’s not looking. Maybe after they’ve bought their tickets and Adam goes to find them seats while Kurt stands in line for popcorn.

He really should.

But he doesn’t.

\---

The Glee girls have just finished getting their _Moulin Rouge_ on, and Blaine is snapping photos of them in all their Madonna/Marilyn Monroesque glory when the reminder flashes on his screen.

His heart clenches a little – okay, a lot – but he breathes deep and yes, he misses Kurt, but he loves him, too. And what Kurt needs right now is to be apart. Blaine can do that, because that’s what love is. It’s letting people be who they need to be, and how they need to be, and where they need to be.

(It’s something Blaine thought he understood, but didn’t, when he sent Kurt off to New York in September; he’s only started to get it since Thanksgiving, bit by bit, as they’ve rebuilt their friendship.)

 _Come what may_ , Blaine thinks to himself as he closes the reminder to snap a photo of Marley and Unique, their satin-gloved arms wrapped around each other as they make kissing faces for the camera.

And he means it. He knows that Kurt loves him, but he also knows that Kurt doesn’t want to; that the thing that causes Blaine so much happiness is tied up with pain for Kurt. And he can’t exactly blame Kurt for that. So if friendship is all they’ll ever have –

Marley turns to Unique and plants a kiss on her wig. Unique lets out a hoot and a smiles and a “Girl, you better not be getting lipstick in Unique’s hair!”

Marley giggles and hugs her all the more tightly. “Aww, you’ll forgive me if I do, _daaahling.”_

Unique tosses her hair. “Unique will forgive you if you clean up any messes you make.”

“Deal,” says Marley.

And deep in his heart, Blaine knows that – as friends or as lovers – he and Kurt will be okay.

\---

On March 15, 2011, Blaine paced the halls of Dalton's main building from the time classes got out at 3:00 p.m. until his phone alarm went off at 3:30 p.m. He’d decided, earlier that afternoon, to give himself 30 minutes to figure out what to say to Kurt, and then go to Kurt and say it.

But 3:30 struck and all he felt ready for was vomiting in the large neo-classical urn just inside the building’s main entrance. So he hit the snooze and paced the halls some more. If any of the boys he passed by said hello to him, he had no idea. He was drowning in thoughts of Kurt: Kurt’s smile and Kurt’s eyes and Kurt’s voice – so exquisite Blaine wouldn’t be surprised if it could bring the dead back to life.

It had brought Blaine back to life.

Blaine hadn’t even known he was dead; not until right before Valentine’s Day, when Kurt put himself out there in a way that was a hundred times braver than Blaine’s serenade to a guy he hardly knew (because Jeremiah’s rejection could only bruise his ego, and not his heart) and Blaine realized how absolutely terrified he was of life and everything it entails: making mistakes and screwing things up and falling down and picking yourself back up and maybe, if you’re lucky, trusting someone to help you back up when you can’t do it on your own.

Blaine hadn’t given his trust to anyone since before the Sadie Hawkins dance.

And suddenly, terrifyingly, he wanted to trust Kurt with everything. With his heart.

His alarm went off again ten minutes after he hit snooze, and Blaine shot down the corridors toward the common room where Kurt always spent his afternoons. He came to a sudden, screeching halt just outside the door and froze – or, rather, his body froze. Because his heart was still galloping frantically like a runaway horse. He stood there for a minute, breathing deeply and listening to Kurt hum to himself; and once he realized that his heart was never going to slow, he walked in.

When he saw Kurt bent over Pavarotti’s casket, pouring out such care over a tiny bird who wasn’t even around anymore to know how much he was loved, the old gospel tune he’d learned back before his parents stopped going to church started through Blaine’s head: _His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me._

Kurt had so much love to give, and Blaine knew in that moment that he would always feel it, as long as he remembered not to be afraid.

\---

It falls on a Friday this year. If they were still together, Blaine would have come out to New York for the weekend; they’d begun planning it over dinner at Breadstix on their last (first) anniversary. They were going to get tickets for either _Wicked_ or _The Book of Mormon_ , and if Kurt was living with Rachel, they’d kick her out of the apartment for the weekend and make it their own home; they’d leave their clothes off as much as possible and take turns making breakfast in bed for each other and (Kurt didn’t say this, but he started to plan it out in his head) on the morning that Kurt made breakfast, Blaine would find two platinum rings at the bottom of his coffee cup, melted down and refashioned from the ones Burt and Elizabeth Hummel exchanged 26 years earlier.

Kurt has the rings in his dresser, but they’re still fitted to his parents’ fingers. He hasn’t touched the box since September.

\---

On Wednesday, Adam asks Kurt over for a Friday-night _Downton Abbey_ marathon. “I’ll make curry,” he says in a sing-songy voice – or is that just his accent? – and smiles with that cute, lopsided grin that made Kurt fall for him in the first place.

It’s charming – it really, really is – but Kurt already knew the answer before Adam asked. “No,” Kurt says, too quickly and without explanation. “I can’t on Friday. But would Saturday work for you?”

They make plans for Saturday.

And Kurt makes his own plans for Friday.

\---

Blaine keeps busy on Friday. There’s Glee after school, and when 3:42 goes by he almost doesn’t register it, he’s so busy doing a reprise of “I Still Believe” for the New Directio

ns in an effort to convince them it would be a good contender for Regionals.

Okay, and maybe he’s singing it for Kurt, too.

And then there’s Cheerios practice, which takes him through dinner, when he heads over to the Hummels’ to eat pizza and watch movies with Sam.

They have the house mostly to themselves. Finn is upstairs packing for New York and in no mood to talk to anybody; Burt is still in D.C., and Carole’s gone out with some friends. All of which means they get to use the big TV in the living room instead of Sam’s tiny computer. It also means Blaine doesn’t have to walk past Kurt’s room tonight, which is probably good, or he might be tempted to lean his face against the door and pretend it was Kurt he was leaning against.

“What do you want to watch?” Sam asks, browsing the shelves of DVDs next to the television.

“I don’t know,” Blaine says. _“The Way We Were?”_

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. They get married and he has an affair and –”

“No.”

“ _The Notebook?”_

“I think I’m in the mood for something with a few more special effects.”

_“Moulin Rouge?”_

“Not exactly where I was going with that,” Sam says. He turns around and flops down onto the couch next to Blaine. “Dude, what’s gotten into you? Is something going on with you and Kurt?”

Blaine shakes his head. He was doing so well today until – right now. “No,” Blaine says. “Not really. I mean – not since the wedding.”

Sam just looks at him. “Is _that_ the problem?”

Blaine shakes his head again. “No. We’re still talking. It hasn’t been awkward or anything. We’re getting along really well, I think. It’s pretty much the same as it was right before the wedding.”

Sam gets the same look on his face he gets when they’re watching a mystery and he figures out the whodunit. “So _that’s_ the problem.”

“Maybe?” Blaine shrugs. “I don’t know. I just … miss him. It’s our anniversary today. And I want to call him up and tell him how great he is because he _is_ , and he’s my best friend even if he’s not my boyfriend, but – I guess it doesn’t seem appropriate.”

Sam pats Blaine on the shoulder. “You’re probably right about that.”

They sit in silence for a moment, staring at the coffee table in front of them.

“Okay,” Sam finally says. “We’ll watch _District 9._ There's aliens and lots of things blow up, plus it’s a tear-jerker. Win-win for everybody. Unless –” He stops.

“What?”

Sam gives Blaine a meaningful look. “That’s not, like, one of your and Kurt’s date movies, is it? Because I’m not gonna let you wallow tonight. You can cry, but you can’t wallow.”

Blaine smiles. “No. It’s not one of our date movies.”

“Okay.” Sam jumps up to grab the DVD from the shelf.

Blaine grabs a piece of pizza from the box and places it on a plate, cutting it into bite-size pieces as Sam starts up the DVD player. “Sam?” he says.

“Yeah?” Sam turns around.

“Thanks.”

Sam’s smile is almost as wide as his face. “That’s what friends are for, dude.”

\---

At 3:42 p.m., Kurt Hummel is in the Museum of Modern Art, looking at Edvard Munch’s _The Scream._ He came here because he wanted to be alone and to treat himself, and because the painting is famous, and it’s going to be gone in a month. He wasn’t really thinking about the fact that it was supposed to portray existential angst, and that maybe he’s had enough of that this year.

So he’s been staring at it, which is kind of hard because the place is packed and there are a bunch of other people trying to stare at it, too, and he’s finally come to the conclusion that he doesn’t get it.

Because he’s supposed to full of despair looking at this painting, right? And yet – it’s beautiful. The blues are so blue, and the sky is firey orange-yellow like a summer sunset, and the Screamer is supposed to be disturbing, but it just reminds Kurt of a skull, and Kurt hasn’t thought skulls were creepy since he was 11 years old and it dawned on him that they’re what give our faces structure. Without them, human beauty wouldn’t exist.

When Kurt’s phone starts to vibrate against his leg, he gives up on trying to feel Munch’s despair. He makes his way out of the crowded room and walks through the museum until he finds a room where no one else is and looks at a sculpture of metal and wood that makes him think of bridges, and how they connect two things that were separate before.

\---

Kurt eats dinner at a Laotian restaurant that’s not too busy to refuse a request for a table for one on a Friday night. Which might be a bad sign, but the food is actually really good. He orders the kang gai, a soup with a broth of chicken, coconut milk, galangal and lemongrass, and eats it slowly and deliberately, savoring each mouthful like he’s making love to it – which he kind of is because, seriously, this is the most exquisite thing he has ever tasted. He follows that with a catfish steamed in banana leaves and decides that, if he were a catfish, this restaurant would definitely be where he’d want to go when he dies.

He tips the waitress generously because the food is good and he is, for the first time in weeks, genuinely and unselfconsciously happy.

\---

Blaine’s not sure who’s crying more by the end of _District 9_ – him or Sam. The tissue box is between them, and they’ve gone through so many of them that the discarded ones form a pyramid on top of the empty pizza box.

“I love you, man,” Sam says when the credits are over, pulling Blaine into a tight hug. “You can wallow over Kurt all you want, I don’t care.”

“Thanks,” Blaine says, sniffling into Sam’s shoulder. “You’re a good friend.”

\---

Rachel had invited Kurt to join her and Brody at callbacks at 9, so he knows the apartment will be empty when he gets home, unless Santana has chosen to break in.

Fortunately, she has not.

Kurt’s plan has been to give himself a facial, take a long indulgent bath, give himself a man-manicure, and fall asleep content.

Instead, he hangs his coat, changes into his pajamas, gives his hands and face a quick wash to clean off the grime of the city, and crawls into his bed with his laptop and _Moulin Rouge_.

He cries from the first strains of _Nature Boy_ and never really stops until the last note of _Bolero_ ; when Christian throws the money in Satine’s face he absolutely bawls, because how could he ever doubt that she loves him? Of course she does; anyone can see it in her eyes. “Oh, Blaine,” he murmurs, hugging his knees. “I’m so sorry.”

Kurt cries for a good half hour after the movie is over. It’s exhausting, and it’s exactly what he needs.

And then he grabs his phone and selects Blaine’s name from his contact list. He probably shouldn’t, but he doesn’t care.

\---

Blaine is at home, about to get into bed when his phone buzzes with an incoming text.

 

> _**Kurt:** The greatest thing I’ve ever learned is just to love, and be loved in return._ _**  
> Kurt:** And that's because of you. Thank you._

\---the end---


End file.
